” I Remember You “

” I remember you. I remember your names. I remember what channel you were from. I remember that you filled the parking lot at Mike’s funeral. You stood in a line outside of the door, devouring the footage of crying football players running away from the service, like rabid hungry wolves. You replayed the video of Mike being loaded into the ambulance, over and over and over again, even when people wrote to you and asked you to stop.

And you were there today, in Newtown. Asking children who can barely spell their names what it felt like to have the trajectory of their life changed in a single morning.

How the f**k do you think it feels?

They will remember you. They will remember feeling violated by you. Their parents will regret that the veil of shock blurred their vision enough to allow you to interview their children.

Our country is struggling with finding the answers we need to keep our babies safe. We are struggling with how we feel about guns, and how we feel about mental health care. Report on that.

But the 14 year old child in me begs you, begs you, to not ask children to report on what it felt like. What it sounded like. How scary it was.

I can tell you for sure, that they will live that trauma every single day. They will be 34, sitting in the car with their husband outside their little boy’s preschool, crying silently at the news reports. They will be transported immediately back to 14 years old, and how cold the grass felt under their feet. They will feel the breath of their friends on their neck as they followed each other blindly back into the gymnasium. And they will see your face, foreign and imploring, your voice pleading and fake.

This is a story for only the grown-ups to tell, while the children focus on healing. The path out of that school takes years, and it is a private journey that should only be walked with friends. “